Comments

  • Goodness and God
    No, but we can imagine a world where those things are not evil. If a snail gets sick, do we call that evil or just a moment in the natural order of things? From that, we can imagine a world of just snails. In the snail world, there is no evil, just moments that naturally occur devoid of morals.
  • Goodness and God
    Yes, good and evil obviously exist, but we can easily imagine a world where it doesn't.
    This has nothing to do with my argument, all I am saying is that God does not imply the existence of good and evil since there could be a world where God exists, but good and evil do not.
  • Goodness and God
    It may be so that we cannot infer God's existence from anything. And the argument you make about the existence of morality is most likely a correct one. But that was not at all what I was saying in my post. I was simply arguing against an argument I heard from a theist that if God exists, then good and evil exist.
    I don't believe one could possibly draw from the existence of God (which could or could not be true) the existence of good and evil (which could also be true or not true.) as in, it is not from the existence of God from which we draw evidence for the existence of good and evil.
  • Dangerous Religious Teachings
    Perhaps I should have said instead of "it is easily brought to mind certain religions," "such a religion is easily imagined," for it might not be obvious what religions are like this. I should have said this only because, for what I am trying to say there is no need for a real religion to be like this (though it is my opinion that there are religions like this.) my argument is simply, if there is a religion that denies the self in such a way, Self-abnegation as you put it, then that religion would open the door to morally permissible atrocities in the minds of its followers.
  • Goodness and God
    Like I said to wayfarer, I am not arguing that good does or doesn't exist. simply that the existence of God does not imply the existence of good. I am also not claiming that God does or doesn't exist.
  • Goodness and God
    All I am saying on this point is that if God exists, we cannot infer from this existence that good exists. There is a definite possibility that good does or doesn't exist, but that is not what I am talking about here.
    Here I am simply trying to separate belief in God from belief in good. I only thought of this argument because I was talking to someone and they said that if God exists, then good must surely exist. From this experience, I realized that maybe other people believe such a thing. so, I wanted to put it here as an argument against such a misconception.
    I am not stating the possibility or probability of the existence of either God or good (of which there are arguments for and against both.) I am simply stating that the existence of God does not imply the existence of good.
    Sorry if I was not clear enough, I will try to make it more clear next time. Thank you for your comment so I could clear that up.